After twenty years with no local elections, Nepal begins voting tomorrow for local governing bodies. By law, there is a forty-eight hour breathing period just before the voting starts. When the voting takes place, it will be a general holiday, no business will be transacted. It will be a historic day. And yet, only part of the tale will be told…..
The election date was mandated by a timetable in the constitution adopted two years ago, but due to continuing disruption in the Terai, the date has now been split.
The “Hilly” districts will be the ones voting tomorrow, and the Terai ( the non-hilly part. it’s flat as a pancake) will vote June 14th. Here is a map showing the two regions.
Provincial delineation
Even the delineation of provinces was the cause of much politicking. In the prior centralized government system, the country was divided into 25 “zones” and each included a slice of Terai, a slice of hill-country and a slice of Himalaya. The new provinces are seven, and two are all-Terai, with two more that include a few Terai districts.
Background
The big draws for Tourism in Nepal are the Himalaya and Everest and Kathmandu. Few westerners visit the Terai. Since the 1950s at least, the Terai has engendered a protest movement over their lack of political representation in the capital. For more info on the culture of Terai, click here.
At the time of the new constitution in 2015 the discontent flared up. I wrote a series of blogs right here on DailyKos that followed the “Petrol Blockade” which was a dramatic demonstration of geo-politics of South Asia. The citizens of Nepal living in Terai are often called “Madheshis" as a pejorative. Here is a video from that period that does as good a job as any to describe what the attitude was:
The above video is almost two years old but shows the intensity of feeling in the Terai. Human Rights Watch also published an influential report on this period in time. It should be noted that Nancy Pelosi and her bipartisan group that visited Nepal recently met with Dipendra Jha, one of the human rights advocates in this video. I still think this is the best video on the protests, and the part where the young woman says “send the whole army, you’ll have to kill all of us, you don’t have enough guys” is flat-out astounding.
Giving “Byzantine” a new name
At various times, the political parties of Nepal have protested by boycotting votes in the past, so it is confusing to gauge the actual strength of any given Terai-based party. Why would they boycott? on one hand it sends a message, but on the other hand it may be that the political strength is not what it is advertised to be. (Better to boycott and claim strength than to participate and lose.) The political leaders of Terai fought long and hard to delay the May 14th vote until after a constitutional amendment was passed that further clarified the process, but by the time they signed on to the deal, the deadline for printing ballots was too late. So, the Terai gets to vote a month later. They are using this time to re-align the known parties for greater community support. The daily news has articles on this-or-that party merging with another or forming an alliance. At some point ballots will need to be printed. There are roughly 18,000 polling places.
Voting is communal. The major parties each have a “youth wing” composed of young men who will get demonstrative on behalf of their party. They do things such as burn down the HQ of the opposing party.
And this isn’t even the election for the seats in the National Parliament. But it is an important next step in building a democracy.
Me? I’m here now
I landed late last night and I’ll be here for eight weeks. My project has nothing to do with politics, and as a rule I don’t offend my host country by making specific statements about this or that politician and what they do or say. Still, one of my Nepali friends made me laugh when she sweetly asked “Who do you plan to vote for? you spend enough time here to be eligible?” After my bus accident three years ago many of them said “you are a real Nepali now.” — some sort of strange compliment.